DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 17 December 2008

["Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net>]

DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 17 December 2008
=============================================================

The DocBook Technical Committee met on Wednesday,
17 December 2008 at 1:00p EST (10:00a PST, 18:00GMT,
18:00BST, 19:00CEST, 03:00JST+, 11:30p India+) for 45
minutes.

1. Roll call

Present: Scott Hudson, Dick Hamilton,
Gershon Joseph, Jirka Kosek, Larry Rowland, Bob Stayton,
Norm Walsh.

Absent: Jim Earley, Keith Falhgren, Patricia Gee, Nancy
Harrison, Corey Leong, Dave Pawson, John Pederson,
Pine Zhang

Regrets:  Paul Grosso

We have a quorum of voting members.

2. Accepted the minutes [1] of the previous meeting.

3. Next meeting: 21 January 2009

No regrets so far.

4. Review of the agenda.

No changes.

5. Review of open action items

  a. Bob to organize TDG reading after names are fixed.
     CONTINUE

  b. Norm to write up a backwards compatibility policy document.
     CONTINUE

  c. Gershon to communicate with JoAnne Hackos regarding adoption committee.
     COMPLETED

  d. Norm to incorporate group parameter change (RFE 1998852) into the 
schema
     for 5.1.
     CONTINUE

  e. Norm to ask mailing list about 'rep' on methodparam.
     CONTINUE

  f. Bob to follow up with Norm regarding submittal to OASIS.
     COMPLETED

  g. Dick to review charter and propose changes.
     COMPLETED

  h. Norm to update OASIS site for 5.0 spec and schema.
     CONTINUE

  i. Norm to update spec to include public and system identifiers
     for the 5.0 DTD version.
     CONTINUE

  j. Norm to ask James Clark if Trang update will work better.
     COMPLETED

  k.  Bob to ask mailing list who is using 5.0, which validation
      tool they are using, and why using DTD or XML Schema
      instead of RelaxNG.
     COMPLETED

  l. Jirka to add schema comparison table to DocBook 5.0 Transition Guide.
     CONTINUE

  m. Bob to move the delayed RFEs to the general list
     for the next agenda.
     COMPLETED

  n. Norm to add floatstyle attribute to sidebar for 5.1.
     CONTINUE

  o. Norm to write up proposed content model for initializer.
     CONTINUE

  p. Norm to add subtitle to sidebar for 5.1.
     CONTINUE


6.  DocBook TC charter review.

Dick posted his proposed changes to the TC list. [2]
The TC agreed with the suggested changes.

Dick included these questions in his posting, which the TC answered:

a. Should we keep Simplified?
Yes.

b. Should we add web-site?
No.

c. Should we add a date for 5.1?
Yes, Q3 2008.

ACTION: Dick to incorporate the final changes and send out for approval.

ACTION: Norm to determine OASIS requirements for charter updates.

7.  DocBook 5.0 standards update

We still lack a third OASIS member's statement of DocBook 5.0 usage.

ACTION: Norm to solicit for a third user again.

9.  Discussion of RelaxNG without Schematron (Jirka).

This was really a followup to last month's meeting. We discussed
Bob's informal survey of the DocBook mailing list on 5.0
schema usage.  [3]  RelaxNG is the most used schema form.
There was some question of keeping XML Schema version, but
it can be produced easily from the DTD so there is no harm
in keeping it.

10.  Policy for backwards compatible changes (Norm).

Continued.

11.  Publishing Subcommittee report (Scott).

No meeting this month, so nothing to report.

12. DocBook Adoption Committee proposal (Gershon).

Gershon discussed DocBook promotion with Joanne Hackos,
who thought DocBook was the more sensible choice for
some users.  She suggested getting DocBook speakers into
the next DITA conference (Content Management Strategies/DITA
North America 2009, April 27-29, Florida) [4]
Some TC members may put forth papers.
Norm suggested we continue with the effort to increase
the visibility of DocBook, and consider presenting
at other conferences.

13. Using a map for modular DocBook (Dick and Jim).

Continued.

14.  Review of Requests for Enhancement

    To browse a specific RFE, enter the URL (on one line):

      http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&;;
      group_id=21935&atid=384107&aid=XXXX

    RFEs to be considered
      1097183  Allow Task as a sibling of sections
      1679665  Add better support for modular documentation
      1722935  DocBook 5: Adding proofreader in @class for othercredit?
      1770787  Rename firstname and surname
      1907003  biblioid content model too broad
      2021383  Is 'rep' on methodparam a mistake?
      2100736  initializer should allow constants

No RFEs were reviewed in this meeting.

-----

[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200811/msg00005.html
[2] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200812/msg00003.html
[3] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200812/msg00006.html
[4] http://www.cm-strategies.com/

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
bobs@sagehill.net